With sales unsurprisingly strong during the two-day preview of Art Basel, one thing is especially clear: if you're not a VIP, you won't begin to a get a chance at the good stuff.

Not that anyone ever suggested that art fairs were particularly democratic, but it does seem a shame that even the best of some of the more affordable items ("more affordable" being a relative term) were snapped up before the general public could even see them.

Sales reports are still coming in, with the conspicuous exception of the 1954 Rothko at Marlborough , which finally received a price tag of $78 million. And now that ArtInfo's Judd Tully has spotted the painting as the one dealer Bob Mnuchin sold in 2007 at Christie's for just shy of $27 mil, it probably won't get that. Was it worth more in 2007 than $27 million? Probably. Should it be worth $78 million now? Well, that would depend on whether you think another Rothko that sold for $87 million recently was worth that much. But this is all part of the disruption and confusion of the auction game.

As for what did sell:

Warhol's massive "Joseph Beuys," with diamond dust, at Acquavella Galleries, which had asked $10 million (rumors suggest the final sale was for less).

At Hauser & Wirth, Philip Guston's oil on canvas 'Orders' (1978) for $6 million sold to a European private collector on day one of the preview, as did Louise Bourgeois' $2 million "Arched Figure" and Paul McCarthy's 2012 black walnut sculpture, "White Snow and Prince on Horse", for $1.8 million

David Zwirner, as always, had a successful start, finding a new owner for Bruce Nauman's (somewhat grotesque) "Untitled: Four Small Animals" (1989) (price undisclosed), as well as for Donald Judd's brilliant blue "Bernstein, 81-13" ($2.6 million) and Adel Abdessemed's series of five steel maps ("Untitled," 2011) which sold for $300,000 for the group. Other Zwirner sales include Neo Rauch's "Manner mit Flugzeugen" (2012) at $400,000 and a small Luc Tuymans portrait for $600,000.

The British haven't done too badly, either, with Lisson Gallery selling Ai Weiwei's "Marble Toy Car" (2010) for 200,000 euros (about $250,000); Shirazeh Houshiary's "Phantom" for £90,000 ($140,000), and Marina Abramovic's "Ecstasy II" (2012) for 75,000 euros, or about $950,000. (Other sales were also made in dollars at Lisson, underlining the international impact of Basel Art.)